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Turkey Says Foreign Terrorists May Be Behind Suicide Blasts

An obscure terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda took responsibility on Sunday for the twin truck bombings at two synagogues that killed 23 people and wounded more than 300 here on Saturday. Turkish officials said they had evidence that suicide drivers had carried out the blasts.

The claim of responsibility was conveyed by Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi, a London-based Arabic newspaper, in an interview with the Arabic satellite station Al Jazeera. Mr. Atwan said the terrorist group, known as the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, had made the claim by e-mail. The group has been linked with Al Qaeda in the past.

The group has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in Iraq in recent months, notably the Aug. 19 truck bombing of the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters and the Oct. 12 car bombing outside a Baghdad hotel used by the Iraqi Governing Council, according to Arabic-language news accounts monitored by the BBC. The group also has claimed responsibility for acts outside Iraq in which no clear evidence of a Qaeda link has been established, including the Aug. 5 bombing in Indonesia, and even the blackouts this summer in the United States and Britain.

While it was impossible Sunday night to confirm any role by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades in the synagogue attacks, the speedy claim of responsibility by a non-Turkish group supported the contention by Turkish officials that the bombings were the work of foreign terrorists, possibly from Al Qaeda, rather than any homegrown organization.

''Our determination to fight terrorism in the international arena continues because this event has international links,'' the country's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Sunday. Government officials could not be reached for comment after the Jazeera report.

Earlier Sunday, government officials said the blasts appeared to be suicide attacks using identical Isuzu pickup trucks. According to Turkish television, security cameras at the Beth Israel synagogue in the city's Silsi district captured a truck slowing down in front of the synagogue and a policeman approaching to speed it along before it exploded. The policeman died in the blast.

The two trucks exploded about two minutes and three miles apart, shattering the fronts of the Neve Shalom synagogue, Istanbul's largest and the site of two previous attacks, and the Beth Israel synagogue.

Many people believe the attacks were meant as a warning to Turkey not to continue developing ties with Israel or to integrate further with the West. They worry that Turkey's role as a geopolitical bridge between East and West could draw more violence its way, threatening a economic recovery after decades of ruinous inflation and high unemployment.

''During the cold war threat of Soviet expansion, Germany was on the front line, but now Turkey is the contact point for a number of threats faced by the West,'' said Ilter Turan, professor of political science at Bilgi University in Istanbul.

Since its creation from the remains of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey has looked to the West for support in building a modern, secular society on a Western model. But it has also tried to maintain good relations with fellow Muslim countries. It is a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It wants to join the European Union, and it was the first Muslim country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, in 1949.

That position has put it at odds with both sides over the years, most recently with radical Islamic groups who blame it for abolishing the caliphate, or Islamic theocracy, that had existed in some form since the death of the Prophet Muhammad until 1924. Many of the world's most notorious Islamist groups, from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to tiny Ansar al-Islam in Iraq, from Hizb ut-Tahrir in Europe to the global Qaeda network have made restoration of the caliphate their goal.

Turkey's relations with Israel have exacerbated those tensions. The two countries' relations include military cooperation and the sharing of intelligence about radical Islamic groups operating in the region. The Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, arrived in Istanbul on Sunday to tour the blast sites and to show his country's solidarity with Turkey.

''It was a terrorist attack carried out by extremists who don't want to see countries share values of freedom, law, and values of friendship and cooperation,'' Mr. Shalom said. Israeli intelligence agencies are helping with the investigation.

Some people saw the attacks as a consequence of instability in Iraq. Most Turks opposed the American-led invasion largely because they feared that a war would spread violence throughout the region. As a result, the government resisted Washington's requests earlier this year to allow American troops to enter Iraq from Turkey, despite a huge financial incentive. Last month, Turkey offered to send troops to Iraq, then reversed the decision weeks later. ''Whenever there is trouble in Iraq, it has some repercussions on Turkey,'' said Ismail Cem, a former foreign minister and the leader of the social-democratic New Turkey Party. ''This is exactly what happened in previous gulf war.''

Violence in Turkey flared after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and terrorist incidents in the country have increased threefold since the American-led invasion of Iraq in March, Mr. Cem said.

Late Sunday, the scenes of both blasts were illuminated with eerie white light as cleanup crews removed twisted metal and investigators combed the wreckage. Members of Israel's disaster response group, known as ZAKA Rescue and Recovery, had arrived earlier to collect human remains. Sixty-six of the 303 people wounded remained hospitalized, though only a few were reported to be in critical condition.

Sabbath morning services were under way in both houses of worship as well as a bar mitzvah in one. Turkish news reports said, however, that most of the dead were Muslims killed in the narrow street outside the Beth Israel synagogue.

The Anatolian Agency, Turkey's state press service, reported that tissue retrieved from the truck used in one of the explosions belonged to someone of Arab ethnicity and that the bombs were made from a mixture of ammonium nitrate and oil. A director of the national police's criminal evidence office in Istanbul, however, said there had been no conclusive determinations made so far.

Political commentators said the bombings were unlikely to push the government back from cooperation with the West or to coerce the governing Justice and Development Party to return to its Islamist roots. The party was formed by former members of the conservative Islamic Virtue Party three years ago.

Mr. Turan said the governing party would probably distance itself further from conservative Islamic groups to assure a nervous population of its commitment to secular government.